13 People Who Had Foreknowledge of JFK's Assassination
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One of the many fascinating discoveries uncovered by independent researchers in the 60 years of investigation since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, is the revelation that numerous people had foreknowledge of the assassination.
Why this is so remarkable is because we’ve been programmed since grade school to believe that President Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, and absolutely no one else was involved.
But what you’re not told is that Oswald had no motivation to kill the president and he even denied killing the president. He was also the first person to publicly reveal there was a conspiracy involved in the assassination when he forcefully declared, “I’m just a patsy.”
Unfortunately, the world never got an opportunity to hear what else Oswald knew because he was quickly—and conveniently—silenced by a single gunshot while in police custody by a man who would also later publicly reveal that a conspiracy was behind the assassination. That man, Jack Ruby, admitted to reporters that there were more people involved in the assassination when he said, “The people that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.” One of the reporters then asked Ruby, “Are these people in very high positions, Jack?” Ruby simply, but firmly, responded, “Yes.”
The official government narrative (regurgitated ad nauseam by the mainstream media) is that Oswald was the sole “lone nut” assassin who was aided only by a combination of prodigiously fortuitous luck as well as a long chain of innumerable coincidences. But there’s more to this story that they’re not telling you—much more.
The following thirteen incidents highlight the accounts of those who knew about JFK’s assassination before it happened, thus rendering the official storyline of “Oswald acted alone” as complete rubbish (if Oswald even “acted” at all). There’s no doubt that there are many more people who knew beforehand about the plot to kill JFK than are listed below, but the following accounts are the ones that are documented and on the record.
This list in not intended to be an exhaustive case study of each incident, but rather a primer—a peek behind the curtain, if you will—to whet your whistle in the hope that your newly piqued curiosity will provoke you to conduct your own research, and persuade you to critically rethink all that you’ve been told to believe about that dark November day in Dallas.
So, without further ado, let’s begin.
01). Melba Marcades (Rose Cherami)
The Woman Who Knew Too Much
The story of Melba Christine Marcades is such a smoking gun, it earned a scene in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK. Melba’s story proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a conspiracy was behind the 20th Century’s most shocking crime: the broad daylight murder of a sitting president.
Melba, better known as Rose Cherami (sometimes spelled Cheramie), was a drug runner for Jack Ruby and a dancer at The Carousel Club, Ruby’s nightclub in Dallas.
On November 20, 1963—two days before the assassination of President Kennedy—Rose Cherami was traveling in a car from Miami to Dallas with two men when an argument between them ensued as they drove through Eunice, Louisiana. This argument resulted in Rose being thrown from the car where she sustained injuries requiring hospitalization.
When Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge spoke with Rose regarding the incident, she told him that prior to being thrown from the car, the two men she was traveling with discussed a plot to kill JFK in Dallas. Admittedly, Lieutenant Fruge blew off the woman’s claims.
Rose also told the hospital staff, including Doctor Victor Weiss and Doctor Wayne Owen, about the pending assassination of JFK. As expected, no one believed her because, after all, she wasn’t a stand-up citizen.
But that’s not all Rose talked about during her hospital stay. She told everyone about how she knew both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, and that she had witnessed Ruby and Oswald together at The Carousel Club on more than one occasion.
Two days after Rose arrived at the hospital, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States of America, was assassinated in Dallas, just as Rose said.
Of course, after the assassination, Rose was no longer considered crazy. News about Rose’s foreknowledge of JFK’s assassination spread throughout the hospital and everyone she talked to (including Lieutenant Fruge) immediately became vital witnesses in the investigation of the murder of JFK.
However (but not surprisingly), neither the Dallas Police Department nor the FBI showed any interest in this information, and neither did the Warren Commission.
On September 04, 1965, Rose‘s body was found lying in a remote area just east of Big Sandy, Texas. Although some hospital reports claimed she was alive for up to eight hours before expiring at the hospital, her death certificate claims she was dead on arrival.
The official explanation for Rose Cherami’s death was that she had been run over by a motor vehicle. However, one injury of note was a “deep punctate stellate wound above her right forehead,” the type of injury sustained from a direct-contact gunshot.
You can read a more detailed account of Rose Cherami’s story here.
02). Joseph Milteer
The Plot To Kill JFK Was Captured On A Secret Miami Police Recording Two Weeks Before The Assassination
On November 09, 1963, Joseph A. Milteer (a segregationist JFK-hater with ties to others who hated JFK, as well as ties to those suspected of bombing the Birmingham, Alabama church that killed four children) was surreptitiously recorded by the Miami Police Department while he spoke with police informant William Somersett, in Somersett’s third floor Miami apartment. During this conversation, Milteer candidly spoke of JFK’s upcoming assassination.
Somersett: I think Kennedy is coming here November 18th or something like that to make some kind of speech. I don’t know what it is, but I imagine it will be on TV.
Milteer: You can bet your bottom dollar he is going to have a lot to say about the Cubans; there are so many of them here.
Somersett: Well, he’ll have a thousand body guards, don’t worry about that.
Milteer: The more body guards he has, the easier it is to get him.
Somersett: What?
Milteer: The more body guards he has, the more easier it is to get him.
Somersett: Well, how in hell do you figure would be the best way would be to get him?
Milteer: From an office building. With a high powered rifle.
The conversation between Milteer and Somersett continued.
Somersett: Do you think he knows he’s a marked man?
Milteer: I’m sure he does. Yes.
Somersett: Are they really going to try to kill him?
Milteer: Oh yes, it’s in the working.
Somersett went on, revisiting the JFK assassination plot by telling Milteer, “Hitting this Kennedy, I’ll tell you, is going to be a hard proposition,” if the Secret Service covers all the office buildings. Milteer said that if the Secret Service has any suspicions, they would, but not if they aren’t suspecting the assassination. Milteer then offered an example in regards to assassinations: “You wouldn’t have to take a gun up there. Take it up in pieces. All those guns come knocked down and you can take them apart.”
Amazingly, Joseph Milteer even revealed the plan for a patsy when he said, “Hell, they’ll pick up somebody within hours after, if anything like that would happen, just to throw the public off.”
No date for the assassination was discussed and no city was named, so because this conversation between Milteer and Somersett took place in Miami—and JFK was due to visit Miami nine days later on November 18, 1963—measures were taken and security was upgraded for the president’s visit.
According to page 233 of the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, warnings of the Joseph Milteer threat were dispatched to Miami, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Washington, but it “was ignored by Secret Service personnel in planning the trip to Dallas” and “no effort was made to relay it to Special Agent Winston G. Lawson, who was responsible for preparations for the trip to Dallas, or to Forrest Sorrels, special agent-in-charge of the Dallas office.”
This report further pointed out that “two threats to assassinate President Kennedy with high-powered rifles, both of which occurred in early November 1963, were not relayed to the Dallas region.”
So, where was Joseph Milteer on November 22, 1963?
Many researchers believe (in part because of the above photograph) that Joseph Milteer was standing on Houston Street in Dealey Plaza, watching the presidential motorcade pass by on its way to delivering Kennedy to the kill zone.
The day after the assassination, Joseph Milteer and William Somersett met again, this time in Jacksonville, Florida. According to Robert J. Groden in his book, The Killing of a President, Somersett claimed that at this meeting, Milteer expressed his pleasure with the success of the previous day’s assassination, shaking Somersett’s hand and telling him, “Well, I told you so. It happened like I told you, didn’t it? It happened from a window with a high powered rifle. . . . That was the way it was supposed to be done, and that was the way it was done.”
To read a transcript of the Miami P.D. recording of the Joseph Milteer and William Somersett conversation (that also happens to contain Milteer’s candid discussion about an attempt to kill Martin Luther King Junior, and even naming the intended assassin of King), visit the Mary Ferrell resource website here. To watch a clip of the Milteer/Somersett meeting featured in the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, click here.
03). The Oxnard, California Phone Call
“The President Is Going To Die At 10:30"
Shortly after 10 o’clock on the morning of November 22, 1963, telephone operators in Oxnard, California received a startling phone call. So odd was the call, the original operator who answered the phone, Doris Bliss, summoned operator Jean Shores to pick up the line because she suspected something was wrong after hearing “a fuzzy sound” and whispering on the line.
The strange call, lasting approximately ten to fifteen minutes, was accompanied by several peculiar statements uttered by the unknown female caller, none of which, however, was as shocking as the caller’s statement about the president: “The president is going to die at 10:10.”
The operators looked at the clock on the wall. It read between 10:07 and 10:08 AM.
Nearly 1,500 miles away in Dallas, Texas, JFK’s presidential motorcade was due to enter Dealey Plaza at 12:10 PM Central Time, 10:10 AM Pacific Time in Oxnard, California.
From Mann Deville:
“The motorcade was scheduled to enter Dealey Plaza at 12:10 p.m., followed by a 12:15 p.m. arrival at the Trade Mart, where President Kennedy was scheduled to deliver a speech and share a steak luncheon with local government, business, religious, and civic leaders and their spouses.”
The motorcade, however, became delayed and somehow, whoever this caller was, knew it because the unknown woman on the line amended her prediction to account for a twenty minute delay by then telling the operators, “The president is going to die at 10:30.”
At exactly 12:30 PM Central Time in Dallas, Texas (10:30 AM Pacific Time in Oxnard, California), shots rang out in Dealey Plaza and President Kennedy was fatally struck.
To this day, the unknown female caller has never been identified.
To conduct additional research on this prescient phone call to the Oxnard operators, check out the FBI report here.
04). Eugene Dinkin
The Man Who Intercepted The JFK Plot
U.S. Army Ordinance cryptographic code operator, Private First Class Eugene Dinkin, was stationed in Metz, France when he intercepted and decoded not one, but two messages regarding the coming assassination of President Kennedy.
The first message he intercepted was in October of 1963, the second was on November 02, 1963 (less than three weeks before the assassination). No one believed Dinkin’s warnings, and when he discovered the Army was going to (conveniently) require him to undergo psychological evaluation, Dinkin instead chose to go AWOL before reemerging on November 06, 1963, at the United Nations in Switzerland, Geneva where he told reporters of his knowledge of the deciphered plot against President Kennedy.
Dinkin was arrested on November 13, 1963. After his arrest he was sent to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, but not before first being held at a psychiatric hospital.
The assassination still took place, and Dinkin’s attempt to thwart it was ushered down the memory hole, not even earning a mention in the Warren Report.
You can research more about Dinkin and his attempt to warn of Kennendy’s demise here, including Dinkin’s other sobering revelation:
“In September, 1963, Dinkin noticed material in the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and other print publications, that was negative toward the president and his policies and implied that he was a weak president in dealing with the Russians. The examples that he found became more negative, the suggestion being that if he were removed as president it would be a good thing.”
05). David Fredrick Christensen
Another Code Operator, Another Plot Interception
Little is know about David Christensen, but like Eugene Dinkin, Christensen was a code operator for the U.S. military in 1963 who happened upon information he wasn’t supposed to know.
Christensen intercepted a communication sometime in October of 1963 regarding the plot to kill JFK, and just like Dinkin, he was ignored and his sanity called into question.
A letter he wrote to a friend mentioning his foreknowledge of the assassination can be read here.
06). Richard Case Nagell
The Man Who Used A Pseudo Bank Robbery To Get Out Of The Assassination Plot
Decorated veteran of the Korean War, Richard Case Nagell was a U.S. Intelligence operative for the CIA who discovered there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, and that Lee Harvey Oswald was marked to be the patsy.
Nagell was tasked with attempting to foil the assassination plot, up to and including killing the patsy, but instead—in an attempt to remove himself from all involvement in the conspiracy—he chose to purposely get himself arrested by firing a gun in an EL Paso, Texas bank and then waiting outside for the police to arrive.
Nagell would later tell author Dick Russell that a few rogues in the CIA (and Texas oil interests) were behind the assassination.
You can read all about Nagell’s story in the book The Man Who Knew Too Much (purchase here) by Dick Russell.
07). Elizabeth Cole
Eavesdropping On A Payphone About The Plot To Kill JFK
Elizabeth Cole was an undergraduate student and president of the International Students Club at Hunter College in New York City.
During the fist week of November 1963, she was attending a Foreign Students Convention at Rutgers University in New Jersey when she had the occasion to meet a young Cuban man (whose name she could not recall) from Fairleigh Dickson University who spoke of his disdain of Fidel Castro for what the dictator had done since coming to power in Cuba. This unknown student also spoke of his anger about the failure of the recent Bay of Pigs invasion, claiming to have had friends who were involved in that invasion.
Later, Elizabeth Cole attempted to use a pay phone at the convention to call her parents when she discovered the phone was occupied by the same unknown Cuban student, speaking to someone in Spanish. Elizabeth, who was bilingual, listened to the student speak about “a plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.” This included details such as a “book company” and the city of Dallas as being the location where the assassination was to take place.
Elizabeth heard the student also mention that an unnamed high ranking government official would “afford aid and/or protection to the people involved.”
You can read more about Elizabeth Cole’s testimony by reviewing this government document here.
08). Jorge Martinez Soto
The Parrot Jungle Incident
On November 01, 1963, Lillian Spingler was employed in the gift shop of the Parrot Jungle in Miami, Florida when a customer that she believed was of Cuban descent came in. While talking with Lillian, the man’s conversation turned political and he made a comment about shooting Kennedy “between the eyes.”
The unknown man also said his friend “Lee” was a sharpshooter who served in the military, spoke Russian, and lived in either Texas or Mexico. (Although Lee Harvey Oswald was no sharpshooter, based on military records, he did serve in the Marines, he did speak Russian, and he did live in Texas.)
After the assassination of President Kennedy, the Parrot Jungle mystery man was finally identified as Jorge Antonio Martinez Soto, and although he admitted to having a conversation with Mrs. Spingler at the Parrot Jungle, he claimed that in regards to the assassination remarks, she must have simply misunderstood him.
Eventually the authorities told Lillian Spingler to forget about the incident and to not mention it any more. And the Warren Commission—who found it important enough to include in their report that Jack Ruby’s mother wore dentures—for some reason couldn’t be bothered to investigate the Parrot Jungle incident.
For more information on the Parrot Jungle incident, refer to the FBI report here.
09). Jose Rivera
A Most Peculiar Dinner Date
On April, 22, 1963, a neuroscientist named Adele Edisen was having dinner in Washington D.C. with another doctor whom she had met earlier that month at a biomedical conference in New Jersey.
The doctor she was having dinner with was Jose Rivera, the location of the dinner date was Blackie’s House of Beef, and among the various topics of conversation, two things stood out: Rivera’s inquiry into whether or not Adele knew Lee Oswald, and Rivera’s suggestion that Adele visit TheCarousel Club in Dallas (owned by Jack Ruby).
Adele denied knowing Lee Oswald so Rivera told her that Oswald used to live in Russia, now lives in Dallas with his wife and child, and is planning to visit New Orleans. Rivera encouraged Adele to get to know the Oswalds, calling them a “very lovely couple.”
The following night, Adele was receiving a tour of the city from Rivera. As they approached the White House, Rivera made the comment, “I wonder what Jackie will do when her husband dies.”
Later that night, Rivera asked Adele to call Lee Harvey Oswald when she returned to New Orleans, even providing her with the phone number 899–4244. He said he wanted her to tell Oswald to “kill the chief,” but then he claimed, “we are just playing a little joke on him.” Adele was under the assumption Lee Oswald was a fellow scientist and friend of Rivera.
When Edisen arrived in New Orleans, she called Oswald, as instructed, and spoke to him on the phone, but he denied knowing who Jose Rivera was, and Adele chose not to deliver the “kill the chief” message.
Adele eventually contacted the Secret Service because of the odd things Rivera had spoken to her about the president. But before she went to visit the Secret Service she cancelled, citing her fear they would not believe her.
Adele finally followed through (after JFK was assassinated) and told her story to both Secret Service Agent J. Calvin Rice, and FBI Agent Oren Bartlett.
Find out more about Jose Rivera here and Adele Edisen here.
10). Cambridge News
Big News Is Coming
Twenty-five minutes before shots rang out in Dealey Plaza ending the life of President Kennedy, the senior reporter of Cambridge News in England received a telephone call from a man who said, “Call the American Embassy in London for some big news.” The caller then hung up.
The FBI report about this incident can be read here and a news article suggesting the identity of the unknown caller can be read here.
11). Homer Echevarria
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, And Assassinations
On November 21, 1963, a Cuban exile named Homer Echevarria was negotiating the sale of guns with an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms informant named Thomas Mosely. During this brokerage, Echevarria told the informant that they’d close the arms deal “as soon as we take care of Kennedy.”
JFK was assassinated the very next day.
The Secret Service began investigating this lead before the investigation was taken over by the FBI, who subsequently, did nothing with it.
An unidentified woman who worked at a hotel in Beverly Hills called the KLAC news bureau in Los Angeles on November 24, 1963 (two days after the assassination). She told Josh King and Ted Meadows of KLAC that on November 21, 1963, she was riding the hotel elevator just before 7 PM with an unknown man who was reading a newspaper. When she asked the man, “What are the headlines?” the man responded, “Kennedy has been assassinated. Kennedy is dead.”
The man on the elevator has never been identified and neither has the woman who called KLAC, but you can read the official report of this incident here.
13). President Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Party And The Duck
On the evening before the assassination, a party was held at the Dallas, Texas home of oil tycoon, Clint Murchison. Among those in attendance were Vice President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover.
Lyndon Johnson’s mistress, Madeline Duncan, was also in attendance at this party, and after Johnson emerged from a closed door meeting in one of the rooms in the house, he told Madeline, “Those [expletive deleted] Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat, that’s a promise.”
During the motorcade through Dallas the following day, a group of four police motorcycles and the secret service follow-up car trailed JFK’s limo, with Vice President Johnson’s vehicle behind them. As all the vehicles turned onto Elm Street, Johnson—sitting in the rear passenger seat next to his wife and Senator Ralph Yarborough—is said to have ducked just as (or before) the first shot was fired, even though no one else initially responded to any of the first shots being fired, including the secret service agents riding in the car between Kennedy and Johnson. (The Presidential Motorcade Schematic Listing showing the order of all the cars in the motorcade, as well as all the occupants’ seating positions in those cars, can be reviewed here).
In the famous Altegens photo (6), Kennedy can be seen reacting to being struck by a projectile in the throat, while secret service agents John Ready and Paul Landis (riding on the exterior of the passenger side of the follow-up car) can be seen gazing behind them, over their right shoulders, but no one is taking cover or any other furtive action yet, except Lyndon Johnson who has already ducked, evidenced by his absence from his position in the back seat of his car.
A tale was later crafted that Agent Rufus Youngblood leapt into action from the front seat, pushing Johnson down in the back seat and covering Johnson with his body. (Youngblood even received a medal for this supposed act of bravery.)
Here’s how Lyndon Johnson described it to the Warren Commission:
“I was startled by a sharp report or explosion, but I had no time to speculate as to its origin because Agent Youngblood turned in a flash, immediately after the first explosion, hitting me on the shoulder, and shouted to all of us in the back seat to get down. I was pushed down by Agent Youngblood. Almost in the same moment in which he hit or pushed me, he vaulted over the back seat and sat on me. I was bent over under the weight of Agent Youngblood’s body, toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough.”
However, Senator Yarborough, riding in the back seat with Johnson (next to Johnson’s wife), came forward to announce that this claim was an outright lie; that Youngblood did no such thing. Yarborough unabashedly refuted Johnson’s spurious claim in the book Crossfire - The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs:
“However, former Texas senator Ralph Yarborough, who was sitting beside Johnson that day, told this author: ‘It just didn’t happen…. It was a small car, Johnson was a big man, tall. His knees were up against his chin as it was. There was no room for that to happen.’ Yarborough recalled that both Johnson and Youngblood ducked down as the shooting began and that Youngblood never left the front seat. Yarborough said Youngblood held a small walkie-talkie over the back of the car’s seat and that he and Johnson both put their ears to the device. He added: ‘They had it turned down real low. I couldn’t hear what they were listening to.’”
Even if Lyndon Johnson didn’t duck until the first shot was fired, why is it that only he and Agent Youngblood reacted to the first shot(s) while no one else in the crowd or motorcade had yet, including in JFK’s own limo where he was shot in the throat?
Did Lyndon Johnson and Agent Youngblood—expecting to hear shots—respond prematurely because of their foreknowledge? The remark Johnson made to Madeline Duncan the night before at the Murchison party would strongly suggest so. And even Oswald’s murderer, Jack Ruby, pointed an accusatory finger at President Johnson.
For more eye-opening information on Lyndon Johnson’s dark rise to the presidency and his connection to the murder of JFK, I cannot recommend enough, the banned episode from the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The episode revealing the true Lyndon Johnson and his connection to the assassination is entitled The Guilty Men, and you can watch it here.
Conclusion
It is my hope that you will thoughtfully consider what you’ve read, and the consequences of what it all means, even all these years after the assassination. It is also my hope that this article will serve as a springboard to vault you into far deeper research on this subject.
However, I leave you with this admonition: peeling back the first few layers of this onion could result in a lifelong fascination with researching one of America’s most heinous crimes, its subsequent cover up, and the countless geopolitical ramifications this brazen coup d’état spawned.
J.L. Pattison has been an autodidactic student of the JFK assassination for as long as he can remember, and he feels it’s vitally important to educate future generations about the facts surrounding the assassination of the 35th president of the United States.
J.L. Pattison considers it a labor of love to introduce the subject of the JFK assassination to newer generations by taking the complexities of the assassination and boiling them down to bite-sized, easy to understand essays, like his popular work, 25 Facts You Were Never Told About Lee Harvey Oswald.
J.L. Pattison is also the author of four contemporary speculative fiction books, including Saving Kennedy(a collection of short stories about time travelers attempting to stop the JFK assassination). To find out more, and to see his other books, visitJLPattison.com.
13 People Who Had Foreknowledge of JFK's Assassination
13 People Who Had Foreknowledge of JFK's Assassination
13 People Who Had Foreknowledge of JFK's Assassination
One of the many fascinating discoveries uncovered by independent researchers in the 60 years of investigation since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, is the revelation that numerous people had foreknowledge of the assassination.
Why this is so remarkable is because we’ve been programmed since grade school to believe that President Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, and absolutely no one else was involved.
But what you’re not told is that Oswald had no motivation to kill the president and he even denied killing the president. He was also the first person to publicly reveal there was a conspiracy involved in the assassination when he forcefully declared, “I’m just a patsy.”
Unfortunately, the world never got an opportunity to hear what else Oswald knew because he was quickly—and conveniently—silenced by a single gunshot while in police custody by a man who would also later publicly reveal that a conspiracy was behind the assassination. That man, Jack Ruby, admitted to reporters that there were more people involved in the assassination when he said, “The people that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.” One of the reporters then asked Ruby, “Are these people in very high positions, Jack?” Ruby simply, but firmly, responded, “Yes.”
The official government narrative (regurgitated ad nauseam by the mainstream media) is that Oswald was the sole “lone nut” assassin who was aided only by a combination of prodigiously fortuitous luck as well as a long chain of innumerable coincidences. But there’s more to this story that they’re not telling you—much more.
The following thirteen incidents highlight the accounts of those who knew about JFK’s assassination before it happened, thus rendering the official storyline of “Oswald acted alone” as complete rubbish (if Oswald even “acted” at all). There’s no doubt that there are many more people who knew beforehand about the plot to kill JFK than are listed below, but the following accounts are the ones that are documented and on the record.
This list in not intended to be an exhaustive case study of each incident, but rather a primer—a peek behind the curtain, if you will—to whet your whistle in the hope that your newly piqued curiosity will provoke you to conduct your own research, and persuade you to critically rethink all that you’ve been told to believe about that dark November day in Dallas.
So, without further ado, let’s begin.
01). Melba Marcades (Rose Cherami)
The Woman Who Knew Too Much
The story of Melba Christine Marcades is such a smoking gun, it earned a scene in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK. Melba’s story proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a conspiracy was behind the 20th Century’s most shocking crime: the broad daylight murder of a sitting president.
Melba, better known as Rose Cherami (sometimes spelled Cheramie), was a drug runner for Jack Ruby and a dancer at The Carousel Club, Ruby’s nightclub in Dallas.
On November 20, 1963—two days before the assassination of President Kennedy—Rose Cherami was traveling in a car from Miami to Dallas with two men when an argument between them ensued as they drove through Eunice, Louisiana. This argument resulted in Rose being thrown from the car where she sustained injuries requiring hospitalization.
When Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge spoke with Rose regarding the incident, she told him that prior to being thrown from the car, the two men she was traveling with discussed a plot to kill JFK in Dallas. Admittedly, Lieutenant Fruge blew off the woman’s claims.
Rose also told the hospital staff, including Doctor Victor Weiss and Doctor Wayne Owen, about the pending assassination of JFK. As expected, no one believed her because, after all, she wasn’t a stand-up citizen.
But that’s not all Rose talked about during her hospital stay. She told everyone about how she knew both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, and that she had witnessed Ruby and Oswald together at The Carousel Club on more than one occasion.
Two days after Rose arrived at the hospital, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States of America, was assassinated in Dallas, just as Rose said.
Of course, after the assassination, Rose was no longer considered crazy. News about Rose’s foreknowledge of JFK’s assassination spread throughout the hospital and everyone she talked to (including Lieutenant Fruge) immediately became vital witnesses in the investigation of the murder of JFK.
However (but not surprisingly), neither the Dallas Police Department nor the FBI showed any interest in this information, and neither did the Warren Commission.
On September 04, 1965, Rose‘s body was found lying in a remote area just east of Big Sandy, Texas. Although some hospital reports claimed she was alive for up to eight hours before expiring at the hospital, her death certificate claims she was dead on arrival.
The official explanation for Rose Cherami’s death was that she had been run over by a motor vehicle. However, one injury of note was a “deep punctate stellate wound above her right forehead,” the type of injury sustained from a direct-contact gunshot.
You can read a more detailed account of Rose Cherami’s story here.
02). Joseph Milteer
The Plot To Kill JFK Was Captured On A Secret Miami Police Recording Two Weeks Before The Assassination
On November 09, 1963, Joseph A. Milteer (a segregationist JFK-hater with ties to others who hated JFK, as well as ties to those suspected of bombing the Birmingham, Alabama church that killed four children) was surreptitiously recorded by the Miami Police Department while he spoke with police informant William Somersett, in Somersett’s third floor Miami apartment. During this conversation, Milteer candidly spoke of JFK’s upcoming assassination.
Somersett: I think Kennedy is coming here November 18th or something like that to make some kind of speech. I don’t know what it is, but I imagine it will be on TV.
Milteer: You can bet your bottom dollar he is going to have a lot to say about the Cubans; there are so many of them here.
Somersett: Well, he’ll have a thousand body guards, don’t worry about that.
Milteer: The more body guards he has, the easier it is to get him.
Somersett: What?
Milteer: The more body guards he has, the more easier it is to get him.
Somersett: Well, how in hell do you figure would be the best way would be to get him?
Milteer: From an office building. With a high powered rifle.
The conversation between Milteer and Somersett continued.
Somersett: Do you think he knows he’s a marked man?
Milteer: I’m sure he does. Yes.
Somersett: Are they really going to try to kill him?
Milteer: Oh yes, it’s in the working.
Somersett went on, revisiting the JFK assassination plot by telling Milteer, “Hitting this Kennedy, I’ll tell you, is going to be a hard proposition,” if the Secret Service covers all the office buildings. Milteer said that if the Secret Service has any suspicions, they would, but not if they aren’t suspecting the assassination. Milteer then offered an example in regards to assassinations: “You wouldn’t have to take a gun up there. Take it up in pieces. All those guns come knocked down and you can take them apart.”
Amazingly, Joseph Milteer even revealed the plan for a patsy when he said, “Hell, they’ll pick up somebody within hours after, if anything like that would happen, just to throw the public off.”
No date for the assassination was discussed and no city was named, so because this conversation between Milteer and Somersett took place in Miami—and JFK was due to visit Miami nine days later on November 18, 1963—measures were taken and security was upgraded for the president’s visit.
According to page 233 of the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, warnings of the Joseph Milteer threat were dispatched to Miami, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Nashville, Philadelphia, and Washington, but it “was ignored by Secret Service personnel in planning the trip to Dallas” and “no effort was made to relay it to Special Agent Winston G. Lawson, who was responsible for preparations for the trip to Dallas, or to Forrest Sorrels, special agent-in-charge of the Dallas office.”
This report further pointed out that “two threats to assassinate President Kennedy with high-powered rifles, both of which occurred in early November 1963, were not relayed to the Dallas region.”
So, where was Joseph Milteer on November 22, 1963?
Many researchers believe (in part because of the above photograph) that Joseph Milteer was standing on Houston Street in Dealey Plaza, watching the presidential motorcade pass by on its way to delivering Kennedy to the kill zone.
The day after the assassination, Joseph Milteer and William Somersett met again, this time in Jacksonville, Florida. According to Robert J. Groden in his book, The Killing of a President, Somersett claimed that at this meeting, Milteer expressed his pleasure with the success of the previous day’s assassination, shaking Somersett’s hand and telling him, “Well, I told you so. It happened like I told you, didn’t it? It happened from a window with a high powered rifle. . . . That was the way it was supposed to be done, and that was the way it was done.”
To read a transcript of the Miami P.D. recording of the Joseph Milteer and William Somersett conversation (that also happens to contain Milteer’s candid discussion about an attempt to kill Martin Luther King Junior, and even naming the intended assassin of King), visit the Mary Ferrell resource website here. To watch a clip of the Milteer/Somersett meeting featured in the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, click here.
03). The Oxnard, California Phone Call
“The President Is Going To Die At 10:30"
Shortly after 10 o’clock on the morning of November 22, 1963, telephone operators in Oxnard, California received a startling phone call. So odd was the call, the original operator who answered the phone, Doris Bliss, summoned operator Jean Shores to pick up the line because she suspected something was wrong after hearing “a fuzzy sound” and whispering on the line.
The strange call, lasting approximately ten to fifteen minutes, was accompanied by several peculiar statements uttered by the unknown female caller, none of which, however, was as shocking as the caller’s statement about the president: “The president is going to die at 10:10.”
The operators looked at the clock on the wall. It read between 10:07 and 10:08 AM.
Nearly 1,500 miles away in Dallas, Texas, JFK’s presidential motorcade was due to enter Dealey Plaza at 12:10 PM Central Time, 10:10 AM Pacific Time in Oxnard, California.
From Mann Deville:
The motorcade, however, became delayed and somehow, whoever this caller was, knew it because the unknown woman on the line amended her prediction to account for a twenty minute delay by then telling the operators, “The president is going to die at 10:30.”
At exactly 12:30 PM Central Time in Dallas, Texas (10:30 AM Pacific Time in Oxnard, California), shots rang out in Dealey Plaza and President Kennedy was fatally struck.
To this day, the unknown female caller has never been identified.
To conduct additional research on this prescient phone call to the Oxnard operators, check out the FBI report here.
04). Eugene Dinkin
The Man Who Intercepted The JFK Plot
U.S. Army Ordinance cryptographic code operator, Private First Class Eugene Dinkin, was stationed in Metz, France when he intercepted and decoded not one, but two messages regarding the coming assassination of President Kennedy.
The first message he intercepted was in October of 1963, the second was on November 02, 1963 (less than three weeks before the assassination). No one believed Dinkin’s warnings, and when he discovered the Army was going to (conveniently) require him to undergo psychological evaluation, Dinkin instead chose to go AWOL before reemerging on November 06, 1963, at the United Nations in Switzerland, Geneva where he told reporters of his knowledge of the deciphered plot against President Kennedy.
Dinkin was arrested on November 13, 1963. After his arrest he was sent to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, but not before first being held at a psychiatric hospital.
The assassination still took place, and Dinkin’s attempt to thwart it was ushered down the memory hole, not even earning a mention in the Warren Report.
You can research more about Dinkin and his attempt to warn of Kennendy’s demise here, including Dinkin’s other sobering revelation:
05). David Fredrick Christensen
Another Code Operator, Another Plot Interception
Little is know about David Christensen, but like Eugene Dinkin, Christensen was a code operator for the U.S. military in 1963 who happened upon information he wasn’t supposed to know.
Christensen intercepted a communication sometime in October of 1963 regarding the plot to kill JFK, and just like Dinkin, he was ignored and his sanity called into question.
A letter he wrote to a friend mentioning his foreknowledge of the assassination can be read here.
06). Richard Case Nagell
The Man Who Used A Pseudo Bank Robbery To Get Out Of The Assassination Plot
Decorated veteran of the Korean War, Richard Case Nagell was a U.S. Intelligence operative for the CIA who discovered there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, and that Lee Harvey Oswald was marked to be the patsy.
Nagell was tasked with attempting to foil the assassination plot, up to and including killing the patsy, but instead—in an attempt to remove himself from all involvement in the conspiracy—he chose to purposely get himself arrested by firing a gun in an EL Paso, Texas bank and then waiting outside for the police to arrive.
Nagell would later tell author Dick Russell that a few rogues in the CIA (and Texas oil interests) were behind the assassination.
You can read all about Nagell’s story in the book The Man Who Knew Too Much (purchase here) by Dick Russell.
07). Elizabeth Cole
Eavesdropping On A Payphone About The Plot To Kill JFK
Elizabeth Cole was an undergraduate student and president of the International Students Club at Hunter College in New York City.
During the fist week of November 1963, she was attending a Foreign Students Convention at Rutgers University in New Jersey when she had the occasion to meet a young Cuban man (whose name she could not recall) from Fairleigh Dickson University who spoke of his disdain of Fidel Castro for what the dictator had done since coming to power in Cuba. This unknown student also spoke of his anger about the failure of the recent Bay of Pigs invasion, claiming to have had friends who were involved in that invasion.
Later, Elizabeth Cole attempted to use a pay phone at the convention to call her parents when she discovered the phone was occupied by the same unknown Cuban student, speaking to someone in Spanish. Elizabeth, who was bilingual, listened to the student speak about “a plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.” This included details such as a “book company” and the city of Dallas as being the location where the assassination was to take place.
Elizabeth heard the student also mention that an unnamed high ranking government official would “afford aid and/or protection to the people involved.”
You can read more about Elizabeth Cole’s testimony by reviewing this government document here.
08). Jorge Martinez Soto
The Parrot Jungle Incident
On November 01, 1963, Lillian Spingler was employed in the gift shop of the Parrot Jungle in Miami, Florida when a customer that she believed was of Cuban descent came in. While talking with Lillian, the man’s conversation turned political and he made a comment about shooting Kennedy “between the eyes.”
The unknown man also said his friend “Lee” was a sharpshooter who served in the military, spoke Russian, and lived in either Texas or Mexico. (Although Lee Harvey Oswald was no sharpshooter, based on military records, he did serve in the Marines, he did speak Russian, and he did live in Texas.)
After the assassination of President Kennedy, the Parrot Jungle mystery man was finally identified as Jorge Antonio Martinez Soto, and although he admitted to having a conversation with Mrs. Spingler at the Parrot Jungle, he claimed that in regards to the assassination remarks, she must have simply misunderstood him.
Eventually the authorities told Lillian Spingler to forget about the incident and to not mention it any more. And the Warren Commission—who found it important enough to include in their report that Jack Ruby’s mother wore dentures—for some reason couldn’t be bothered to investigate the Parrot Jungle incident.
For more information on the Parrot Jungle incident, refer to the FBI report here.
09). Jose Rivera
A Most Peculiar Dinner Date
On April, 22, 1963, a neuroscientist named Adele Edisen was having dinner in Washington D.C. with another doctor whom she had met earlier that month at a biomedical conference in New Jersey.
The doctor she was having dinner with was Jose Rivera, the location of the dinner date was Blackie’s House of Beef, and among the various topics of conversation, two things stood out: Rivera’s inquiry into whether or not Adele knew Lee Oswald, and Rivera’s suggestion that Adele visit The Carousel Club in Dallas (owned by Jack Ruby).
Adele denied knowing Lee Oswald so Rivera told her that Oswald used to live in Russia, now lives in Dallas with his wife and child, and is planning to visit New Orleans. Rivera encouraged Adele to get to know the Oswalds, calling them a “very lovely couple.”
The following night, Adele was receiving a tour of the city from Rivera. As they approached the White House, Rivera made the comment, “I wonder what Jackie will do when her husband dies.”
Later that night, Rivera asked Adele to call Lee Harvey Oswald when she returned to New Orleans, even providing her with the phone number 899–4244. He said he wanted her to tell Oswald to “kill the chief,” but then he claimed, “we are just playing a little joke on him.” Adele was under the assumption Lee Oswald was a fellow scientist and friend of Rivera.
When Edisen arrived in New Orleans, she called Oswald, as instructed, and spoke to him on the phone, but he denied knowing who Jose Rivera was, and Adele chose not to deliver the “kill the chief” message.
Adele eventually contacted the Secret Service because of the odd things Rivera had spoken to her about the president. But before she went to visit the Secret Service she cancelled, citing her fear they would not believe her.
Adele finally followed through (after JFK was assassinated) and told her story to both Secret Service Agent J. Calvin Rice, and FBI Agent Oren Bartlett.
Find out more about Jose Rivera here and Adele Edisen here.
10). Cambridge News
Big News Is Coming
Twenty-five minutes before shots rang out in Dealey Plaza ending the life of President Kennedy, the senior reporter of Cambridge News in England received a telephone call from a man who said, “Call the American Embassy in London for some big news.” The caller then hung up.
The FBI report about this incident can be read here and a news article suggesting the identity of the unknown caller can be read here.
11). Homer Echevarria
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, And Assassinations
On November 21, 1963, a Cuban exile named Homer Echevarria was negotiating the sale of guns with an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms informant named Thomas Mosely. During this brokerage, Echevarria told the informant that they’d close the arms deal “as soon as we take care of Kennedy.”
JFK was assassinated the very next day.
The Secret Service began investigating this lead before the investigation was taken over by the FBI, who subsequently, did nothing with it.
The Secret Service report can be read here.
12). The Man In The Elevator
Future Headlines
An unidentified woman who worked at a hotel in Beverly Hills called the KLAC news bureau in Los Angeles on November 24, 1963 (two days after the assassination). She told Josh King and Ted Meadows of KLAC that on November 21, 1963, she was riding the hotel elevator just before 7 PM with an unknown man who was reading a newspaper. When she asked the man, “What are the headlines?” the man responded, “Kennedy has been assassinated. Kennedy is dead.”
The man on the elevator has never been identified and neither has the woman who called KLAC, but you can read the official report of this incident here.
13). President Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Party And The Duck
On the evening before the assassination, a party was held at the Dallas, Texas home of oil tycoon, Clint Murchison. Among those in attendance were Vice President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover.
Lyndon Johnson’s mistress, Madeline Duncan, was also in attendance at this party, and after Johnson emerged from a closed door meeting in one of the rooms in the house, he told Madeline, “Those [expletive deleted] Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat, that’s a promise.”
During the motorcade through Dallas the following day, a group of four police motorcycles and the secret service follow-up car trailed JFK’s limo, with Vice President Johnson’s vehicle behind them. As all the vehicles turned onto Elm Street, Johnson—sitting in the rear passenger seat next to his wife and Senator Ralph Yarborough—is said to have ducked just as (or before) the first shot was fired, even though no one else initially responded to any of the first shots being fired, including the secret service agents riding in the car between Kennedy and Johnson. (The Presidential Motorcade Schematic Listing showing the order of all the cars in the motorcade, as well as all the occupants’ seating positions in those cars, can be reviewed here).
In the famous Altegens photo (6), Kennedy can be seen reacting to being struck by a projectile in the throat, while secret service agents John Ready and Paul Landis (riding on the exterior of the passenger side of the follow-up car) can be seen gazing behind them, over their right shoulders, but no one is taking cover or any other furtive action yet, except Lyndon Johnson who has already ducked, evidenced by his absence from his position in the back seat of his car.
A tale was later crafted that Agent Rufus Youngblood leapt into action from the front seat, pushing Johnson down in the back seat and covering Johnson with his body. (Youngblood even received a medal for this supposed act of bravery.)
Here’s how Lyndon Johnson described it to the Warren Commission:
However, Senator Yarborough, riding in the back seat with Johnson (next to Johnson’s wife), came forward to announce that this claim was an outright lie; that Youngblood did no such thing. Yarborough unabashedly refuted Johnson’s spurious claim in the book Crossfire - The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs:
Even if Lyndon Johnson didn’t duck until the first shot was fired, why is it that only he and Agent Youngblood reacted to the first shot(s) while no one else in the crowd or motorcade had yet, including in JFK’s own limo where he was shot in the throat?
Did Lyndon Johnson and Agent Youngblood—expecting to hear shots—respond prematurely because of their foreknowledge? The remark Johnson made to Madeline Duncan the night before at the Murchison party would strongly suggest so. And even Oswald’s murderer, Jack Ruby, pointed an accusatory finger at President Johnson.
For more eye-opening information on Lyndon Johnson’s dark rise to the presidency and his connection to the murder of JFK, I cannot recommend enough, the banned episode from the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The episode revealing the true Lyndon Johnson and his connection to the assassination is entitled The Guilty Men, and you can watch it here.
Conclusion
It is my hope that you will thoughtfully consider what you’ve read, and the consequences of what it all means, even all these years after the assassination. It is also my hope that this article will serve as a springboard to vault you into far deeper research on this subject.
However, I leave you with this admonition: peeling back the first few layers of this onion could result in a lifelong fascination with researching one of America’s most heinous crimes, its subsequent cover up, and the countless geopolitical ramifications this brazen coup d’état spawned.
SEE RELATED: 25 Facts You Were Never Told About Lee Harvey Oswald
J.L. Pattison has been an autodidactic student of the JFK assassination for as long as he can remember, and he feels it’s vitally important to educate future generations about the facts surrounding the assassination of the 35th president of the United States.
J.L. Pattison considers it a labor of love to introduce the subject of the JFK assassination to newer generations by taking the complexities of the assassination and boiling them down to bite-sized, easy to understand essays, like his popular work, 25 Facts You Were Never Told About Lee Harvey Oswald.
J.L. Pattison is also the author of four contemporary speculative fiction books, including Saving Kennedy (a collection of short stories about time travelers attempting to stop the JFK assassination). To find out more, and to see his other books, visit JLPattison.com.